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From: | Rjack |
Subject: | Re: reinvent (for GPL) code u wrote for employer who owns it? |
Date: | Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:32:24 -0400 |
User-agent: | Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 (Windows/20090302) |
Barry Margolin wrote:
In article <49CC334B.F81551B2@web.de>, Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> wrote:Barry Margolin wrote: [...]But the program to be copied is NOT open source. He wants toreimplement it as open source, but he has to be sure that the new version doesn't contain any vestiges of the originalone that he wrote as a work for hire.http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise27.html"One way to avoid infringement when writing a program that is similar to another program is through the use of a “clean room” procedure. This is what was done when companies cloned the BIOS of the IBM personal computer to produce compatible systems. In a clean room procedure, there are two separate teams working on the development of the new program.Isn't this the exact same clean-room description I responded to earlier in the thread?Are you all suggesting that the programmer should hire a team, describe his original program to them, and then have them write the new one? So the original programmer is effectively "team 1",and he hires a "team 2" to rewrite the program for him?
Copyright infringement is a legal concept. Sometimes there are no easy ways to accomplish a goal. So... The person who authored the original code and that wishes to create the same functionality in new non-infringing code should look to the legal concepts underlying legal infringement analysis. 1) Study the principles underlying the abstraction-filtration-comparison test used by the courts to answer infringement questions. http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise22.html This is an excellent decision to read to learn how infringement is judged. http://digital-law-online.info/cases/28PQ2D1503.htm If you're turned off because you're a programmer and not a lawyer then -- too bad. Questions of copyright infringement are first and foremost, legal questions. You need to know what constitutes illegal copyright infringement so that you can use your programming skills to avoid it. 2) Google for techniques used in code obsfucation. Never repeat comments to the original code. Change variable and function names. Change all "for" loops into equivalent "while" loops. Implement integer variables as "floats", etc., etc., etc. 3) Face the fact that lawyers in this World are as inevitable as death and taxes -- just more unpleasant to deal with. Sincerely, Rjack :)
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